


Given No Choice

by Eilinelithil



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2019-10-27 14:20:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17768411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eilinelithil/pseuds/Eilinelithil
Summary: Rush is dreaming - or is he? Destiny received an unexpected distress call, and seeks to answer, but to do that needs, not only Rush's help, but to travel backwards in time.Written to settling in my own mind how to get Rush out of stasis, and Eli in, and as a response to The Writer's Block February Prompt. Complete in and of itself, and does not at all solve the cliff hanger at the end of SGU... in fact it leaves a bigger one - Oops.





	1. Ticking Of the Clock

The sound of the clock ticking was extraordinarily loud, much louder than it ever was in reality. He was dreaming, but worse than that, unlike most of the time, he didn’t  _ know _ he was dreaming, until suddenly he did.

Ordinarily such a jolt would have woken him, but held in stasis aboard the  _ Destiny _ , locked inside one of the many pods that were all that stood between him and figuring out a way - some kind of genius hack - to avoid certain death, he  _ couldn’t _ wake. The realization and the abrupt return of lucidity left him profoundly… well frankly it pissed him off!

_ “Wake up, Nick.” _

The voice, one he knew oh-so-well, repeated what had at first tipped him back into mental awareness while his body was still held captive. This time, though, it came with a touch, a hand that trailed gently across the back of his shoulders as she leaned down to speak the words against his ear, her breath tickling the scruffy beard on his cheek.

“What are you doing?” he asked not really thinking clearly at first and he shrugged off the touch as he opened his eyes to peer at the complex equations on the computer screen in front of him. She always did interrupt him at the most inconvenient times. “I’m working.”

It hit him then, a ton of lead, all over again.  She couldn’t be there; he couldn’t be home working… she was dead and  _ he _ was on board  _ Destiny _ .

_ Destiny _ . It was the ship herself, talking to him. Getting inside his head.

“What do you want?” he snapped irritably, pivoting the chair so that he could see the imagined likeness of Gloria that the ship seemed to have decided was the appropriate form by which to communicate.

“Still as charming as ever, I see,” she answered.

“Look,” he got up from the chair, and paced toward her, “I’m not interested in your games. If you think this,” he gestured a hand up and down the form in front of him, “is gonnae endear you to me, or get whatever it is you want from me, then…”

The scene around him dissolved, his home office fading out as the classroom faded into being, the blackboards almost surrounding him on three sides filled with figures and symbols, equations, that caught his attention again, and he absently picked up a stick of chalk as he walked toward the boards, ignoring the footsteps behind him that came close.

“We need your help.”

“Ah, Doctor Jackson,” he said, not without a touch of sarcasm, “So ye think you can do better?”

“Take a look at the equations, Doctor Rush, and  _ you _ tell  _ me. _ ”

He did look; moved from one board to the next, left to right, a frown starting on his his face and deepening by the time he reached the final board, and the Gate address written at the bottom of it.

“I  _ know _ this address,” Rush mused, as he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.  Not right away.

“Yes,” Jackson-that-was-Destiny answered.  “We have a primary directive--”

“I think ye’re mixing yer metaphors there, just a little,” Rush said, without taking his eyes off the boards, having once more gone back to the first, adjusting numbers and symbols as he found an error in the workings.

“--and it has been activated,” Jackson continued as though he hadn’t said anything. “And we need your help to achieve it.”

Numbers and letters began to move around the blackboards as if on their own, but rather than creating chaos to lose him, Rush followed their progress, moving with them… striking like a snake to correct errors as he spotted them, until…

“Wait! Stop!” he commanded, and turned to face Jackson, a deep frown on his face, half of concern, half in horror.  “This is relativity… time! Time and trajectory you…”

“Yes,” Jackson nodded. “We must return.”

“Pegasus!” Rush underlined the Gate address as if in triumph.  “This is the Gate address for Atlantis.”

“Right again.” Jackson confirmed and moved to stand beside Rush, nodding his head toward a particular part of the complex equation. “Hours ago, our recall conditions were met. We have already begun the journey back toward the City.”

“But... “ Rush turned to the blackboard to peer at the formulae, then spun again to face Jackson. “No.  Absolutely not, ye… we cannot go back. This…” He adjusted the equation several times over, still unsatisfied even when he had achieved the best solution he could. “To make this kind of maneuver, this… slingshot would require manual override. Your own safety protocols would--” he stopped, realizing even before Jackson confirmed.

“Which is why we need your help.”

Nicholas Rush shuddered, taking a huge, uncomfortable breath as the stasis field faded, then blinked out and he slumped against the perspex door that began to lift away, rising to deposit him on the cold of the deck; his shallow breath fogged in the frigid air.


	2. The Impaled Log

Rush stared at the log that was skewered on the metal fence post like a marshmallow on a stick. He was almost certain he was hallucinating, that it was just another attempt by  _ Destiny _ to communicate with him; to coerce him into performing the complex calculations and initiating the manual safety over-ride when the ship attempted a maneuver well outside of its own safety protocols, but why it had chosen this particular motif, he couldn’t understand.

He recognized the place well enough. Well enough to bring a sour taste to his mouth; the memory that came along with the location not one of his best, not particularly fond. A little cottage or  _ cabin, _ as the Americans might have called it, in the wilds of California. It was surrounded by the kind of fence that now impaled the part of the tree, and the tree was one of several that grew in the grounds surrounding the cottage. It was there that Gloria had brought him, pulling him away from, in her words, the   _ distractions of work _ and had told him - the first time - of her cancer diagnosis.

_ "Nick, stop," she said, and the softness of her voice held something that he'd never heard before - enough to halt his pacing and make him turn toward her.  "Leave work aside, just for a while, please... come and... come and sit with me." _

_ It was then he noticed all she had done while he'd been worrying at the calculation he was working through in his head, scribbling fragments of it and symbols and partial solutions. She had built and lit a fire in the hearth, poured wine -  a deep burgundy that stained the stones in a ripple of red - into two crystal glasses that stood beside where she'd also set down two plates of food; the heat of the fire keeping it all warm. _

_ "Forget work," she said again, "just for tonight... please." _

_ As she held out her hands to him, he set down the notebook and pencil, took the fragile softness of her fingers into the palms of his hands, and drew her into his arms. _

_ "What is it, Sweetheart?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. "What's wrong?" _

It was where he'd been when his life fell apart, and equally where he'd rebuilt it inside the walls that were the impenetrable fortress of his intellect; his genius, and the determination to unravel the mysteries of theoretical physics that would, in time, bring him to the attention of the Stargate program. That chain of events had brought him right to where he now was, lucid enough to know that physically, he was lying shivering and shallow breathing - suffocating on his own carbon dioxide -  in the stasis bay of the ship.

"So, you  _ do _ prefer me to Doctor Jackson."

"You realize," he began speaking even before her footsteps came to a halt behind him, ignoring her sarcasm, "that unless you can get life support working better than it is between the bay and the console room, I'm gonnae freeze t' death, or else asphyxiate, before we can get anywhere close to initiating your  _ insane _ recall protocol."

"You  _ were _ listening, then?" she answered.

“Hard not to,” he said, turning at last, trying to rebuild the wall that had crumbled, just a little, at the memory  _ Destiny _ had awoken in him, at the sight of her - even knowing that she was a construct of the link that still existed between him and the ship. “You were both… pretty insistent, which begs the question.”

“Yes?” she prompted, stepping closer to smooth her hands upward over the lapels of the jacket he wore, before she leaned against him as she always used to do.  He allowed it, for a moment at least, until he felt as though it had become self indulgent, and then he closed his hands around her upper arms and pushed her back to arms length, leaning down just enough to look into her imaginary face.

“What do we get out of all this,” he let go then and gestured between the two of them, “You and me?”

“What do you mean?” She frowned, “It’s a programmed imperative. There is no  _ getting out of _ for us in this.”

“Programmed for you, mebbe.” he agreed, and took a step back, to lay the flat of a hand against the impaled log as he shook his head. “No for me.”

“Don’t turn this into a contest, Nick,” she warned, “you know it’s one you won’t win.”

“What? If I don’t do what you ask, you’ll just… let me die and waken someone else to do what you want - Eli perhaps, or else Colonel Young?”

He pushed against the log, immovable even though the fence itself seemed somehow less sturdy beneath its weight, the ground around it becoming separate from, no longer embracing, the post itself. 

She came closer again, ran the fingers of her hand over his and answered, “If it falls, the whole of everything goes with it,” and waved her free hand at the rest of the fencing that somehow seemed less secure, less… certain somehow.

“No,” he voiced denial of the symbolism she was making explicit in her gesture.

“Yes,” she whispered, standing on tiptoe to kiss him the next of her words coming against the side of his mouth, “You know that you won’t  _ win _ because you won’t let  _ Destiny _ fail.  Won’t let her fall.”

_ Get up Nick… _

Coughing, still shivering, Rush rolled onto his back, forcing his eyes open and searching through the blurred vision for something, anything, that might get him out of the deadly nature of his situation. He spotted the lone EVA suit against the glass of the last closed and functioning stasis chamber.

He reached with a hand that was fast becoming numb, grasped the ridge of the wall and began to drag himself toward it.


End file.
